Burnout 3: Takedown was the first Burnout game that could be played online. Burnout 2: Point of Impact for XBox had online leaderboards through XBox Live but no online play.

The online play is one of the main reasons why Burnout 3: Takedown became extremely popular. The introduction of the offensive driving elements works perfectly when you take the game online. Burnout 3: Takedown has three main online game modes; crash, road rage and race. Race and Road Rage can have up to 6 players in one race. In crash the maximum is 8.

When you host a game online you will have all the tracks and crash junctions available that you have unlocked in the world tour. If you don’t have any cars in a specific series the host can lock the series and you will be given the Type 1 car or the Custom Coupe in the Special Series.

To unlock the Euro-Circuit Racer for online play even if you have not unlocked it in the world tour go to Preview Lap 2 in Downtown (location 6 in the USA) on the world map offline. Change the colour of the Euro 3 times until it is Red again. Press the B button 4 times to go back to the main menu. Select Xbox Live and sign in. Go directly into your friends list and join a friend who is in an unrestricted room. You will be able to select the Euro-Circuit Racer. You have to go through this process every time you want to use the Euro-Circuit Racer online.

The game has a traditional lobby system were you join a central server and then create your own lobby or connect to an already existing game. As long as you are not connected to a specific lobby you can communicate with other players on the same server using the built in text message system. You can also send text messages to your friends that are playing Burnout 3: Takedown.  Once connected to a game you can communicate using the Xbox Live Headset.  Frequently you would not be able to hear the other players in the lobby. To fix this you need to press the white button and cycle your mic (press the button 3 times).

There is also an online ranking system based on your global Burnout points. Basically you get burnout points by driving dangerously and taking down your opponents. The ranking system is mainly based on how much you play and not so much on skill.

Although the game was very popular online lots of people complained because they were not able to connect to other players. Shortly after the release of the game a patch was released to remedy this problem but the problem persisted for many players. The main reason for there problems seems to be people having routers with moderate or strict NAT settings.

 

Lots of additional game modes were invented by the players. Three of the most popular were:

Takedown races

– Selecting a race event but instead of racing get as many takedowns on your opponents as possible before the finish line. The player with the most takedowns wins.

Cat & mouse – Selecting a road rage event and having 5 red players against one blue player. The player that takes the blue player down then becomes the blue player in the next round. If the blue player survived he could play on or select a different mouse.

Infection / Zombie - The opposite of cat & mouse was having 5 blues and 1 red and as the blue players were taken down they would join the red team and try to takedown the blues.

Lobby lurking was also a popular activity. This was when we didn’t do events for a long time because we were having too much fun talking and sending messages in the lobby. The lobby was used as a chat room. This is probably the main reason why lots of friendships and relationships were formed in Burnout 3: Takedown lobbies.